


burn to gold and crumble away

by Analinea



Series: Be still, my whumper's heart [13]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Chameleon Arch (Doctor Who), Day 17, Day 20, Emotional Whump, F/F, Human Doctor (Doctor Who), Medieval, Whumptober 2020, Yaz angst, a bit of Doctor whump but light, but not, happy but a little sad ending, witchfinder, wrongfully accused
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:46:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27122713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Analinea/pseuds/Analinea
Summary: In the long list of things Yaz shouldn’t be enjoying but desperately is, there is her current predicament. Something poetic can probably be said about having found home while being lost in time but she never cared much for metaphors. She’s always been the sensible one, grounded in the moment instead of already dreaming about it.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan
Series: Be still, my whumper's heart [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1947337
Comments: 6
Kudos: 15
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	burn to gold and crumble away

**Author's Note:**

> First of all: first fic for Doctor Who so be gentle?   
> Second of all: I'm not an English native speaker and the only Brit pick available to me is the automatic thing on chrome...sorry T.T once upon a time I was mostly into British shows and movies so I had the right vocabulary but since then English became a mush of internet shitpost language so idk *shrugs* if you have any corrections for me I'm open!
> 
> Third of all: enjoy this story about messy feelings and pocket watches! :)

In the long list of things Yaz shouldn’t be enjoying but desperately is, there is her current predicament. Something poetic can probably be said about having found home while being lost in time but she never cared much for metaphors. She’s always been the sensible one, grounded in the moment instead of already dreaming about it. 

Having a laugh at being chased by angry aliens is easily explained by the adrenaline putting colours on her cheeks and in her life; being never more happy, stranded in the past, is less so. 

It’s selfish. 

The time period isn’t exactly a world of fun, she can admit to that. But Yaz has never expected the world to accommodate her so adaptability is more of a second nature than an effort to be made. And it’s not all bad either, no plague or savagery; maybe they landed in a blessed part of the world, in a blessed year among the cruel ones. Maybe the Doctor wanted to spare her, at least in that.

And sure, she misses her family. But she can bury that deep under the layers of happiness, to be taken out at night and tenderly caressed like an old photograph. A piece of another life, stuck forever between her ribs. 

But it’s bearable. It is, and she hates herself for it, as the days come and go, turning to weeks, turning to two months. Two months older already, her birthday forever a lie now. 

She comes up the path in the forest, golden light between the dancing leaves, mud on the hem of her dress from her errand into town. She’s singing under her breath, a pop song half forgotten and strangely not feeling misplaced in this foreign time. 

The clearing announces itself with its brightness through the trees; Yaz glimpses grey walls covered in dark green ivy, a garden in summer colours: home.

The door is opened, as it always is when the weather permits it. And standing under the lintel marked with the herbalist symbol, is the price to pay for Yaz’s happiness.

The guilt is a companion Yaz learned to eat with, sleep with, laugh through; she can never forget that the Doctor screamed herself into a human body to run and hide. The woman standing before her is not the time lord she used to be, but she’s still the person Yaz loves. 

Except with Jane, she can dream about the kind of eternity only mortal people can dream about. 

Yaz still hurts somewhere she has no name for, at the very centre of her own existence, from the ghost of Jane’s missing piece, neatly folded in a pocket watch. She mourns, in her own way, as much as she mourns the temporary blessing of a simpler love. An inevitable ending. The unquestionable truth that this can never be forever for the Doctor the way it can be for Jane.

No matter that it was given to her. No matter that the Doctor took her hand, between panic and pain, and told her to keep loving her no matter what. “Promise,” she had asked, something wild in her eyes that Yaz doesn’t want to have been fear. 

“Promise,” Yaz had answered. 

“Bit hot today, innit’?” Jane calls, “Might not be the day for a good stew.”

“Bought dry meat and fruits,” Yaz lifts her basket, grounds herself into the moment instead of already grieving for it. 

She’s happy. She yearns sometimes for the burning of muscles after a run, for the violent stream of blood from a frantic heart; but those she can let herself miss. She can settle in the quiet. 

“Hah! What do you say, lunch at the lake? I’d love lunch at the lake. Could even pick up some herbs from up there, right?” she’s already turning away, mumbling to herself about plants and climates. 

“Sounds good,” Yaz answers, stepping into the cool shadow of the cottage. Into the brightness of Jane’s presence, where hours stop existing altogether.

Yes. That’s enough for her. 

To forget about the ticking of time, inside a silver watch, against her heart.

Yaz is intimately familiar with all the possibilities for endings: sometimes things reverse to a previous state, come to a natural stop, taper off, fade into oblivion, are ripped away.

Believing she was prepared for the worst doesn’t lessen the terror.

It took almost nothing for the balance to tip: one person crying witchcraft. Yaz had let herself forget about the barbarisms of the past, tucked away in her little clearing hugged by gentle trees and blooming flowers. Starting to make plans for winter as the leaves started to dip into autumn colours. 

They came for the both of them, but Jane proved again that she’s still the Doctor in all the ways that count; she pushed Yaz to safety and let herself be taken in the confusion.

Yaz runs. She remembers, now, the feel of it; the resonating thump of her feet on the ground, all the way to her brain, giving herself rhythm with her own frantic pace.

She remembers what they do to witches. She remembers the Doctor holding her breath for so long; she can’t forget that Jane has two human lungs and one fragile heart.

Yaz flies through the woods, feeling as if she’s drowning in the panic, the air thickening in her throat to choke the peace out of her.

The lake glistens between the dark grey trunks and the low bushes, flashes of light; it’s tainted with death, but it’s still beautiful.

Yaz shoots out of the forest edge, down the hill to the people gathered in front of the little wooden pier. People Jane saved, watching her about to be killed.

It’s a small village, forgotten in stories. They don’t have the kind of contraption Yaz has seen be used before– it could have meant that this is a merciful place, but it only means their treatment of Jane is crude. She’s on her knees, leashed to the executioner so they can pull her out of the water once she’s been dragged to the bottom by the rocks hanging from her tied up hands. 

Yaz screams her pain– barrelling down so fast she barely touches the ground. The people under her turn their faceless monstrosity towards her; Jane turns to look at her, a breath held on her lips.

Yaz sees the executioner kick her in the back but she doesn’t see her break the water: she collides with the living wall between herself and the love of her life. Standing in the path of a drowning home.

She screams again, a denial this time, as she pushes as they try grabbing her by her clothes, her arms, her hair that Jane has patiently done up in braids every morning since she woke up human. 

Yaz hadn’t even known the Doctor could do that, before she became no more than a story.

Yaz can’t hear anything past the roar of her heart, the insults so inconsequential faced with the unimaginable. She stumbles and gets back up, again and again, loses her vest before finally breaching the sea of cruel hands. It’s only luck that allows her to duck under the Mayor’s arms, his guards’, the executioner’s.

She has no air left in her lungs –she dives anyway.

The cold is a shock to the system as she sinks into murky water. Her eyes sting when they come to rest on tranquil Jane, resting at the bottom, eyes closed behind the veil of her blond strands. Claimed by the lake. 

But Yaz won’t let it take what’s hers. 

Her chest tightens from the need to breathe, but she keeps going down. Maybe they’ll both drown– maybe that’s the way this is supposed to end; not saving the universe but failing to save themselves.

She grabs Jane. Something slips out of her pocket and starts floating down with the slowness reserved for the void of space and the fullness of water.

A pocket watch. A promise.

Yaz grips it between numb fingers. Pushes up. 

And opens the ending of the quiet happiness, to save the mad one. 

It’s not like anyone will know to distinguish freshwater from saltwater, on her cheeks.

“You did the right thing,” the Doctor whispers next to her ear, late at night, when their clothes are dry but their eyes are not. When Yaz has just woken up from a nightmare about golden light and dark silt.

“Feels like I didn’t.”

The quiet now is a heavy one, but at least it’s warm. “You kept your promise, didn’t ya? That’s good, Yaz, my Yaz,” a hand running through her hair. Yaz had forgotten to cherish every touch the Doctor gave her, because Jane hadn’t been hurt by too much closeness. “Promises are fickle things.”

“Can I ask you something, then?”

“Anything,” the Doctor answers as if that doesn’t come with the unspoken truth that asking doesn’t mean getting. 

“Will you still braid my hair?”

The Doctor smiles, eyes haunted. Yaz is familiar with that expression, has started growing her own version of it in the garden of her heart. 

Then the Doctor puts a light kiss on Yaz’s forehead, and between the whines of a TARDIS that understands grief, says, “Promise.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [fumblr](https://kinsbournescream.tumblr.com/tagged/ana-writes-sometimes) if you'd fancy a talk
> 
> Kudos and comments make me so happy <3


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